'I don't see how you have the resources': Veteran reporter bows out, fearing for local news

Journalist Janine Rankin first walked into a workplace filled with cigarette smoke, ink and clanking typewriters.

Forty-five years later she is this week leaving an industry completely changed. Not only has the smoke gone, the printing press long closed and computers taken over, she has far fewer colleagues.

And after a life's work devoted to covering local news in depth, she's not confident vigorous reporting on community issues will survive.

'We're down to such a small team now'

Rankin is full of stories, after decades writing them for readers of the Manawatū Standard newspaper in Palmerston North.

From Timaru, she studied in Christchurch and ended up in the lower North Island because she wanted to move away from home, and the Otago Daily Times wasn't that year taking female graduate reporters. So, she looked north.

"There was a family feel to the newsroom," she said of her early days.

"Everybody supported everybody else. We had to get on with each other, because we were four to a telephone line. We had to make appointments to make phone calls and you had to get in touch with Mrs R at reception if you wanted to make a toll call."

The 66-year-old has covered all sorts of local council rounds, building relationships spanning decades.

"And I also did the health round because that's what they did with the newest young female reporter in the room, because they thought it was an easy gig. Never was. Still isn't. Has got harder."

Career highlights include the newspaper campaign to open a hospice in Palmerston North - Rankin has even written two books about the Arohanui Hospice. She covered flooding in 1988, local government reform - in the 1980s and now - and what to do with wastewater.

RNZ asked if she's confident these sorts of issues will continue to be reported.

"No, not really. We're down to such a small team now of three reporters. With me going away there will be only two. I don't see how you have the resources to follow a developing story over months or years."

News deserts are a phenomenon hitting many parts of the globe. Palmerston North isn't one now, but there is significantly less local reporting in cities like it than even a decade ago.

"Because there are so few of us and there is still that imperative of filling those few blank pages every day we tend to give priority to the stories you know you can seize on and probably get done today, and move on to something else tomorrow," Rankin said.

'End of an era'

After covering smaller local bodies, Rankin began writing about the Palmerston North City Council in the mid-1980s, forming a tag team with fellow reporter Neil Nelson. Rankin and Nelson married in 1985, but he died of a heart attack in Perth in 1996.

"He came through the different way into journalism, by playing cricket with the right people," Rankin said.

This week Rankin made the city council agenda herself as councillors paused normal business on Wednesday to pay tribute to her reporting, institutional knowledge and scrutiny - and Mayor Grant Smith made sure to mention Nelson as well.

Rankin even walked down from her usual perch on the press bench, leaving behind a notebook full of neat shorthand, to sit at the council table, as friends, current and former colleagues and former councillors filled the public gallery.

She was gifted a bunch of flowers and a framed special cover of the council's Palmy Proud magazine, featuring a younger Rankin hard at work.

Smith told RNZ it was the end of an era. To put in context her longevity, when Rankin began at the Standard in December 1981, Smith said he was still a pupil at Palmerston North Boys' High School.

There's a sense, though, that as Rankin and reporters like her retire, something will be lost for local democracy.

"The whole demise of local reporting, actually media in general - it's not healthy for society," Smith said.

"If people don't know about things and things are scrutinised that's when things can go wrong."

Massey University media research associate Dr Cathy Strong is also watching on with unease.

"I am very concerned about the coverage and the transparency about what's going on in local government. I've been following this for several decades and it's getting harder and harder for the average ratepayer - the resident - to know what's going on."

As well as fewer reporters on the ground, local government had become more secretive. She advocates for more specialist civics reporters.

"A lot more journalists that can cover that would do a whole lot, because once it's got the light shone on it a lot of things are then taken care of."

That's a role Rankin has played down the years as the winds of change buffeted once thriving daily provincial newspapers.

She remembers about 300 people at her Christmas party at the Standard, which included the large commercial team and printing press operators. Circulation was well above 20,000 copies a day.

When she leaves on Friday Rankin will wave goodbye to an editor, two fellow reporters and two photographers, who have recently moved from the Standard's long-time office on The Square to a small office in a shared workspace. Circulation figures aren't published for the newspaper any more, but it would likely be a few thousand.

Weathering decades of change

Rankin said she'd been flexible while working through many changes she'd seen in the industry down the years.

These include the introduction of computers in the late 1980s and early 1990s; the closure of Palmerston North's printing press; a newspaper name change from Evening Standard to Manawatū Standard; the growth of online news and decline of print; the newspaper moving from an afternoon daily to a morning edition, and to a weekday tabloid; sharing of content; and many rounds of restructuring. The latest is ongoing.

On the internet: "It was weird having this Stuff website where we gave away our copy. A lot of us struggled getting our heads around that idea. It seems there might have been some good reasons for our hesitance around that.

"It became a lot more immediate. That was quite fun, to be able to get news up really promptly. But then, of course, when I started we had our own printing press and you could come into work in the morning, bang out a story, then you could go and collect it fresh off the press, smelling of nice ink."

She admits recent changes, such as the office move and the Standard now getting printed in Christchurch, meaning the deadline for a newspaper is mid-morning the day before, convinced her it was time to go.

"Most of our news is now two days old. It's hard. We've got our website where we can do the breaking news things, but we're not getting much national coverage.

"That was fun at one stage - to be able to write for Stuff and see your stories go up on the screen and how many people had read it in the last 10 minutes."

As retirement sinks in, she ponders the future of provincial daily newspapers.

"I really don't know. I've spent my whole career with people telling me that one day the Manawatū Standard will be a liftout in what used to be the Dominion, now The Post.

"I used to think that I would like to stay around long enough to see what happened, but I decided I don't need to do that."